


'tis pity he's a horde

by Ocelot_Summer



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inception_kink, Humor, M/M, World of Warcraft - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocelot_Summer/pseuds/Ocelot_Summer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is Alliance. Arthur is Horde. This can only end with bloodshed in the Barrens and lots of corpse-running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'tis pity he's a horde

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during the summer of 2010 as a part of the inception_kink meme for the following prompt: "Eames plays Alliance, Arthur plays Horde."
> 
> I am currently attempting to maintain my WoW-sobriety, so rereading this fic was totally not helping fight the urge to log in.

* * *

He can’t remember when he stopped dreaming. Five years ago? Six? It slips away from all of them, sooner or later. It goes unnoticed until it manifests as a stray thought one morning, a moment interrupting the percolation in the coffee pot. ‘When did I last...?’

Some accept it, move on with their lives and their extractions and don’t worry about what they’re not getting at night. They don’t miss it.

Some crave it with a violent longing, unable that some things, once lost, can never truly be found again.

Eames is of the group that views real, authentic dreaming with the kind of abstract longing one feels for the relics of childhood -- old toys, the trees he used to climb, a favorite jacket. Dreaming is just another thing he remembers fondly. He’d fly sometimes, in the deepest parts of his sleep. Sometimes he’d be a knight, a pirate, a prince, a knave.

It’s hard to ignore that occasional pang in the stomach, even though Eames is the sort to keep himself perfectly and absolutely distracted. So he does what everyone in his line of work does when the tug of longing hits. He hooks up, he plugs in, he throws himself into the artificial construct to try and replace that simple, pure function.

Sort of.

Okay, he plays World of Warcraft, but it’s a lot **like** spending a night hooked up with lines connecting to the PASIV device. Just minus the needle. And with a $15-per-month surcharge. It’s a fair trade, he decides, as another murloc dies by his hand.

* * *

Some nights, the only light in Arthur’s current apartment is the flickering blue of the computer screen. For all the professional pleasure he got from the Fischer job -- inception is possible, he’s done it, they’ll go down as legends in the dreamworld underground -- there’s something intensely primal and satisfying about this. Just going out into Azeroth with his sword and being someone else. Sometimes, he understands the appeal of being a forger and taking on a new face for a little while.

He missed his guild’s first Lich King kill while away on the job and now there’s a steady stream of teasing whispers. ‘where u been?,’ ‘sucka, we needed an OT,’ ‘tell ur boss to stop sending you outta town on raid nitez’.

The taunting always dies down quickly, though. There isn’t a warrior in the guild that can play as well as Arthur. It doesn’t matter if he’s tanking or just dealing some major damage, whether he’s supporting the raid leader and giving instructions to the other 23 raiders or spearing down Alliance scum in PVP -- there’s no one like Arthur.

His guild leaves him the hell alone pretty quickly whenever he mentions the word ‘gquit’.

It’s practice, he tells himself. For the job. It’s about multitasking. Leadership skills. Reflex training. It keeps him sharp and it keeps his stress levels relatively low. If he can deal with fifteen-year-old trash talking warlocks, surely he can deal with projections chasing him with steak knives. Or deal with Eames.

At least in the darkness of his room, there’s no one to see the flush of red creeping up his cheeks at the thought of some particular Eames-related mental images. Okay, not even the game is enough to teach him the patience to deal with Eames, who’s probably an undead warlock at heart. Possibly very similar to the one currently spamming him with ASCII art penises.

He sighs and heads out into Northrend.

* * *

The first time they cross paths, it’s in the Barrens. Eames has never been one to turn down the offer for a little lowbie-trolling. Crossroads is an easy target, too easy, but there’s a certain amusement in watching level 20s plead with him before he smashes the flight master and vanishes again.

He’s jumping up and down on the corpse, tossing a mocking ‘kek’ out to the little Orc in front of him. His character’s braid bounces with every jump. There’s no point in playing a game like this, he knows, unless you can stand to watch your character’s rear end trot around the virtual world. So he’s got a female rogue. Very bouncy. Very pretty. Very good at killing.

That is, until a very large, very male Tauren crashes his party. The next thing he knows, he’s lying on the ground with the familiar ‘do you want to release?’ box staring back at him.

He stares back at the screen, grimly. Bugger. “Well then. Let’s see how you like a little rogue action.”

Eames only dies twice more by the Tauren warrior before he gives up and logs off.

* * *

A shiver of pleasure travels down his spine as he teabags the broken Tauren corpse before /dancing on it. His Night Elf hips undulate and Eames feels a little smile on his face.

The Tarren Mill NPCs continue on peacefully with their business.

* * *

It’s hard to play with a broken finger, but Eames manages. Just a minor misunderstanding when their current mark woke up a tad early and resulted in a very merry chase out of the hotel they’d stashed him in. Eames leapt from a fire escape and managed a very undignified landing. Mostly on his hand.

Arthur didn’t seem very impressed by his requests for the point man to kiss it better.

The handicap is enough for him to wince in pain as he tries to hit a keybind. So he doesn’t have much choice but to watch as the maddeningly familiar Tauren warrior charges him and slaughters him, cleanly and efficiently.

* * *

It’s a coincidence that they’re both lingering outside Icecrown Citadel, waiting for their respective raids. At least, Eames assumes it’s coincidence and not that the Tauren can’t get enough of his obnoxiously attractive Night Elf looks. He doesn’t hide the gleeful chuckle from escaping as his raid outnumbers the little Horde gathering. He gets the killing blow on the Tauren warrior, his poisons giving him just enough edge to take him down.

The Horde raiders just slink inside once they find their corpses and the remains of their dignity, ignoring the dance party Eames has begun atop the summoning stone.

* * *

It’s impossible not to notice the faint shadows brushing the skin below Arthur’s eyes when they meet in Paris for the job. Arthur’s always perfect, a suited-up masterpiece of personal grooming set against the rather ghastly juxtaposition of lawn chairs and grungy warehouses.

So those little shadows, those little smudges, are just enough to make Eames pause. Arthur is sitting in front of his laptop, trying very carefully to ignore the way Eames is draped over his shoulder, staring at his profile.

“Darling, someone appears to be keeping you up for some very... late nights. And it isn’t me.” He makes a face. “Pity.”

Arthur’s face twitches. Just slightly. Enough for Eames to think that maybe, there was a smile there for a moment. For a moment, he thinks he hears Arthur mutter something about ‘damn Night Elves’, but that’s probably just a hallucination.

He lets his hand rest lightly on Arthur’s neck. “Remember Dubai?”

This time, there’s definitely a smile.

* * *

They don’t talk about it. It started during a job in Dubai and continues every now and then, a meandering thing between them that happens on the occasional job. Okay, maybe it’s pretty much every job nowadays but Eames isn’t going to complain about the marked increase in times that he finds Arthur curled up naked in his bed, sweat still drying on his skin.

It’s the perfect kind of arrangement.

When they’re done with work for the day, Arthur’s laptop slipped into his bag and the PASIV packed up and stowed away, Cobb already out the door and heading home to his kids... Well, it’s not like Eames could help himself from grabbing Arthur’s arm and shoving him into the nearest taxi. He’s impulsive, after all.

The cab driver just rolls his eyes as Eames nuzzles into Arthur’s neck. He’s supposed to attack Orgrimmar with his guild around midnight, but the virtual world can bugger off.

“Wish you were driving,” Arthur murmurs into Eames’s shoulder, his fingertips working their way up the delicate flesh of his side. “We’d be there by now. And I’ve got plans--”

Arthur always has plans. Fantastic plans, putting that analytical and deceptive mind to delightfully wicked purposes. As Arthur murmurs possibilities into his ear, tongue flicking out to catch the lobe, Eames lets his eyes close in anticipation.

“If you’ve got one of your little shiny friends on you, we can take over this little tin can right now. I’ll make it to the hotel in five.”

He wants to spend his evening with Arthur’s very, very real hands on his skin tonight.

* * *

“Eames... what is **this**?”The disgust is plain in Arthur’s voice.

It takes a moment for him to process what ‘this’ is. At the moment, given where Arthur’s hands are going, it’ll take him a second to remember even his own name. But Arthur’s teeth suddenly sinking into the tender spot on his skin and he has a pretty damn good idea what the other man is talking about. He’d gotten the ink one extremely drunken night in Tokyo three weeks earlier, but he can’t say that he regrets the rather regal blue-and-gold crest with its familiar lion and shield motif.

“That?” Eames is aware that admitting a World of Warcraft addiction to your coworker-and-part-time-lover is probably not particularly attractive, so he adopts the most innocent and vaguely lecherous look that he can. “Just a silly thing I picked up on my last spin through Japan, yeah? Nothing to worry about. You’ve got other bits of me to explore.”

Instead, Arthur is staring at him with a mix of horror and fascination. Eames isn’t sure how one of his tattoos managed to break Arthur’s eternal state of cool confidence, but it’s certainly... interesting.

“You’re Alliance,” Arthur says, with a generous amount of disbelief in his tone. Eames’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, still working with the more-stalling-more-sexing plan as his hands roam across Arthur’s bare back.

“You’re a damn Varian-lover, aren’t you? What kind of game are you playing, Eames? A human paladin, maybe?”

“A rogue, darling, it’s like you don’t even know me,” he says without thinking. And it clicks, very suddenly, and Eames finds a predatory grin stretching across his face. “Clean-cut little Arthur, one of the unwashed rabble of the Horde?” He’s pushing Arthur down, straddling him with absolute glee resonating his voice. “I always knew you were a naughty, naughty lad.”

* * *

When Arthur wakes up, ‘for the ALLIANCE!’ is scrawled on his side in black marker. Given the careful placement, winding along his thigh and up to the crease of his arse, Eames rather cheerfully volunteers his services to help him clean it off. Arthur swears his eternal vengeance the entire time. It just makes it sweeter when Eames pushes him up against the wall in the shower, water dripping into his eyes as he slides a hand down Arthur’s abdomen.

Sleeping with the enemy, he decides, is bloody fantastic.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> (PS -- For the ALLIANCE!)


End file.
